


The One Who Maria Entrusted...

by Isaak_The_Dragon



Category: Sonic the Hedgehog (Video Games)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-06
Updated: 2020-01-06
Packaged: 2021-02-27 03:41:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22150486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Isaak_The_Dragon/pseuds/Isaak_The_Dragon
Summary: Rouge learns how Shadow felt during the darker moments of his life.
Kudos: 28





	The One Who Maria Entrusted...

The black hedgehog taps his foot impatiently as he is forced to work with Rouge on finishing up important paperwork related to their last mission for G.U.N. It was some forgettable reconnaissance job to survey some land for the agency, probably to watch on Eggman or something. Shadow didn’t particularly care a ‘fourth Chaos Emerald’s’ worth of it, while the bat, of course, took the time to find hidden treasures. Normally, he wouldn’t mind and lend a helping hand, but today was not that kind of day.

Rouge sighed, annoyed of the sound. “Stop doing that, Shadow. It’s not going to make me work on this report any faster.”

The black hedgehog retorted, “Yeah, but I didn’t even want to go on this mission in the first place.”

Rouge turned away from the computer she was doing the report on. “Why don’t you explain, Shadow? You usually just quietly do things, but today, you’re vocal in your frustrations. Why is that?”

Shadow grunted, arms crossed and looked away: “That’s none of your business. Just hurry up so I can leave.”

Rouge smiles softly, noticing something intriguing with her spy skills. “So a personal problem, is it?”

Shadow furled his brow. “Rouge, I am not in the mood for games. Hurry and finish or I’m leaving all the work for you.”

Rouge sighed, turning back to the computer, but smirking softly with a cunning plan in mind. “That personal, huh? Fine, go on. I’ll finish this up myself.”

Shadow got up from his chair, sighing softly. “Finally. I’m taking off now. And don’t you dare think of following me.”

Rouge let out a small chuckle “Who, me?”

Shadow: “You won’t, because I will be teleporting to the place. CHAOS-”

Rouge lunges at the dark hero, latching on his chest with a smirk as he finishes saying “-CONTROL!” It’s too late to pry her off as they disappear in a flash of whitish-green light from the G.U.N. base.

The bat gets a look of surprise when the white light is replaced with the dull glow and buzz of fluorescent light bulbs and quiet flex and relax of metal handling the normal strains of space. They appear to have landed in one of the observatory decks, which allows the viewing of the earth and twinkling stars in the darkness and, in the far off distance, the broken moon floating around a second, intact moon.

Rouge looks around. “Oh? The A.R.K.? Interesting.”

Shadow, despite usually always having a grimace on his face, was in no uncertain terms, angered with his eyebrows lowered. “Interesting? Interesting?! You forcibly latch onto me and all you can say is interesting?!”

Rouge, expecting this was just one of the edgy one’s many ‘moods’, says, “Well, yeah. We weren’t expecting to go to the A.R.K. anytime and I’m not sure why we’re here-”

Shadow’s fist makes contact with the nearby wall hard enough to crack the metal slightly and make an extremely loud BANG!, silencing Rouge. Through gritted teeth, he delivers, “Then if you want, I’ll shuttle you right back to the planet, right now!”

Rouge starts to notice this isn’t a falsified mood. “S-shadow?... What’s wrong?”

Shadow’s frown worsens, but he tries to hide it by turning around, with a sting in his voice. “Why, so you can report to ‘our’ superiors that the ultimate life form is starting to go off the deep end? That he’ll need to go back in stasis for testing?!”

Rouge’s ears droop. “What? You know that I would not do that to you after all we’ve been through.”

Shadow speaks softly: “Please. Leave. I want to be alone.”

Rouge walks up to the darkened hedgehog, putting her hand on his shoulder. “You know I won’t do that. As your friend, I want to be there for you. So tell me, what is wrong?”

Shadow doesn’t respond, but he does make a new sound that makes Rouge gasp softly in surprise. He sounded to have made a sniffing sound as though he were…

“Are you… crying, Shadow?”

Shadow’s voice betrays him with a crack. “N-no. Of course not.”

Rouge tries to get around to Shadow’s front. “Even I can tell that’s a lie. Come on Shadow, tell me… what’s… wrong…” Her voice trails off when she finally can see his head.

Shadow has his eyes nearly closed, and coming off from the side of his nose, a single tear falls down his muzzle and onto the cold, metal floor.

“You really are crying, Shadow…” Rouge looks down, trying to think. “What am I missing…”

Shadow looks up at Rouge, then drops his head back down. Through sniffles he says, “You’ve probably forgotten what with all the events that happen with the Doctor.”

The bat stays lost in thought, trying to figure out what it is.

Shadow gives a rough gasp, struggling to say what he wants to say.”It’s… It’s Mar… Maria’s…”

Rouge finally clicks it together. “The day Maria died?”

And that finally just breaks the hedgehog usual calm, serious demeanor. Hearing someone else mention that just makes him start to cry out “MARIA!!!” in vain, echoing along the quiet steel corridors. Rouge offers her shoulder to cry on and Shadow sobs on it for a long while…

\-----

It’s a couple hours once Shadow stops crying and getting comforted by Rouge to talk again. They have sat near one of the windows offering a view of space and the stars. It appears they have talked about the date some, what we already know about what happened.

Rouge speaks softly: “So every year, around this time, you come here to honor her memory, so she’s not forgotten?”

Shadow nods. “Yeah, and tell her about the passing year.” *He looks up, perhaps to the heavens.* “I hope I am following her promise, getting closer to healing the world.”

Rouge pats a hand on his shoulder. “I’m sure she has noticed, Shadow.”

Shadow sighed. “Will you please keep this a secret?”

Rouge leaned her head on his shoulder. “Of course. You can tell the rest when you’re ready.”

Shadow gave an even softer sigh, relieved. “Thank you.”

A short while of silence again, that Rouge breaks with a question. “If I may ask… what happened after you got shot out from the ARK?”

Shadow’s gaze went to her face, and he could tell the bat was all ears. “You really like prying, don’t you, super spy?” Rouge utters a quiet “Daw.” at ‘super spy’, as it was a sort of code word of friendship between them. “Well, Rouge, it’s not as vivid as the other memories, but I’ll try…”

\-----

Shadow stood in that small capsule with sadness, fear and other complex, messy emotions he couldn’t understand. Before the shot, he had never experienced the dark side of feelings before. Sure, he saw the sadness in Maria’s eyes when her illness made a particularly trying day on her. And sure he saw the fear when Gerald took off his blue glasses, rubbing his eyes and wondering if he’ll finish Project Shadow in time. And anger and rage and loneliness and emptiness… he only read of those in the books in the ARK or on the televisions people had in their rest quarters. But he never understood them, never experienced them before.

Shadow stood in that capsule as it fell to earth, burning red hot in the atmosphere. His mind could not process entirely what transfixed in that room, other than the best friend of his life, the girl he was destined to heal… was lost with one shot of cold lead. At that time, he could not comprehend the fact that she took the bullet for him to help protect him, to hopefully save everyone else’s lives. ‘A use for a saved life’, they would say. The black hedgehog understood it in the present, but in that fall, he could not. All he could feel was a friend had died, right in front of his eyes.

Shadow wasn’t even phased when the capsule landed with a heavy, but soft THUD into the sands of a beach, digging in and leaning on a side. The shoreline quietly splashes water nearby and there was the sound of possibly a city. However, Shadow didn’t even think to look, or even leave the escape pod which miraculously didn’t suffer any damage. He was too preoccupied by one emotion, one that crippled him in a fetal position, remorse.

The hedgehog sat there with massive amounts of guilt and sadness weighing him down, preventing him from getting up. He wished he had done more than just stand there, shoved by Maria into the capsule, getting locked inside and shot off. He wished he were the one who had taken the bullet instead of her, a sweet and innocent child whose only crime was being too near to him, who knew Shadow’s true purpose…

\-----

Shadow couldn’t remember how long he was in that capsule, but at the crack of dawn, he heard a familiar sound, the sound of G.U.N. troopers shouting orders to each other just like in the ARK. He was much too forlorn to look up and see their faces as they surrounded the beach, blocking off access to the public. He could hear hydraulics whirring and soft clangs of metal on sand, then concrete and asphalt, then metal. It was the sound of one of their mech troopers picking up his pod and walking him into a G.U.N. truck.

The trip through the city, then through G.U.N’s facility is a blur, voices of scientists eager that Shadow survived and G.U.N. soldiers, commanders and leaders arguing within ranks that either the experiment should be destroyed or put in stasis or put in a cell, etc. Then the top echelon of G.U.N. and the United Federation either call or come in, he wasn’t sure, and finally just order Project Shadow to be blacklisted, classified… basically blacked out of history and the experiment put in stasis to be forgotten by time forever.

The last moments before his slumber, he still felt great sorrow with what happened, so cold from the outside world. Not even the near absolute-zero cryogenic fluid felt as chilling as the event did. Slowly, his pulse fades… fades… his last thoughts being Maria’s pained face at least… calmed by death. Perhaps she accepted death like a friend she knew was waiting…

\----

In stasis for 50 years, the unconscious mind tends to go a little… crazy. It takes full control and goes off to adventures that barely make much sense at all. It draws from past memories and feelings and feeds it through the imagination. On one hand, it can help to offer dreams to help prepare the conscious mind for any situation and adapt. On the other, it can create fear and nightmares to scare the conscious from danger. Both work together to form the individual into their own independent mind from the rest.

But Shadow is a weird case, with a third part that comes from having the blood of the Black Arms in him. Despite the vastness of space between the planet and the Black Comet, Shadow could hear the leader of the dark creatures barking mental orders to his minions, to do this and to do that. The pure Black Arms could never disobey these commands, but Shadow, being more than that, was able to ignore those commands subconsciously since they were of no use to him.

There was one order that stood out from the rest that… didn’t make sense at the time, that he remembers even though he was unconscious. It was a simple order: ‘Reset your mind’. It wasn’t directed to the Black Arms at all, but him specifically. It seems his mind understood that order and performed a sort of ‘Save and Reboot’ process like a computer. Black Doom had restarted Shadow’s mind from the beginning, replaying his life from beginning to end, including extra memories of him being there to help with Project Shadow. The alien leader most likely did it because a still emotionally defeated Shadow would have been no use to him. Afterwards, it’s quiet once again in Shadow’s mind...

\-----

Shadow’s last conscious memories of interest comes right when the Doctor himself breaks into Prison Island, led by his grandpa’s diary denoting the dark hedgehog thought to be lost forever. The cold liquid leaves and the hedgehog first see lights spinning and klaxons blaring. Did he… go back to that fateful day Maria died? He looked to his side and was nearly shocked to see what he thought was Gerald Robotnik standing right there in a mech. But then, he realized that this guy looked much younger, with an orange mustache instead of white. Then the man introduced himself as Dr. Eggman, the grandson of the greatest scientist.

Shadow’s mind was still in a state of numb, so he didn’t look to be surprised or angered by the revelation. Instead, he was curious to the Emerald in his possession. Seeing it brought up a strange memory that didn’t feel familiar. It was of Gerald telling him to gather the 7 Chaos Emeralds to complete the project and to take revenge on the humans who hurt Maria. Shadow never heard of these stones at any other time and the memory felt very vague in general. But… it was his creator, and his grandson was talking about his creator. He didn’t understand entirely but perhaps this man could help him.

So he decided to go along with the Doctor, causing a near global crisis and fixing it with Sonic’s help. He stopped the ARK from destroying the planet and finally realized what Maria truly wanted and fulfill her wish. But life had other plans for the hedgehog, which surprised even him when his Super Form faded away to nothing and he fell. It was the same as that fall 50 years again, but this time there was nothing to protect him when he lands. ‘What cosmic irony’, he thought, ‘falling for certain death as soon as I remember what my purpose was’. This time, he accepted his fate and stood instead of curling up in fear. The pull of gravity makes him fall faster, and he could feel the heat burning along his body. It did surprise him that he wasn’t actually burning up as one should according to science. He felt as though an interior shield protected him from the inside like insulation.

Perhaps by another mystical twist of fate, Shadow landed right where he had to be. Perhaps Eggman was expecting one of these hedgehogs to fall to their doom eventually, whether from space or high in the sky, but a patrolling catcher robot sensed the hedgehog and caught him in an oversized baseball mitt. The fall did render the hedgehog unconscious with some skin burns and other damage, but nothing entirely broken. According to Eggman’s reports, once he returned to the planet, he was told of Shadow’s finding and immediately puts him in stasis in his base to both heal him and make Android copies.

\------

Rouge smiles after Shadow finishes. Her face suggests she’s been crying. “And that’s when I found you with Omega and the rest is history.”

Shadow’s face had tears on it too. “Yeah… I’m glad you saved me again.”

Rouge winks. “I’d do it again and again for you.”

Shadow chuckles and shakes his head in embarrassment. “I really hope it doesn’t. But thanks.”

Rouge sighs with content and gets up, stretching her wings and back. “Well, I suppose we should finish that report before it’s too late, huh?”

Shadow sighs happily as he gets up too. “Yeah, then we’ll come back to do what I meant to do. Mostly clean out the dust and keep the place looking fine.”

“I’m pretty sure Omega does have some cleaning attachments, and would love to help too.” Rouge chuckles softly.

Shadow rolls his eyes and holds his head. “He would be… ‘annihilating’ all this dust, you mean?” He chuckles softly at his own joke.

Rouge laughs. “Oh yes! He’ll eliminate them all!”

The ARK is filled with the echoes of laughter from Rouge and Shadow as they Chaos Control back to the base.

_FIN_

**Author's Note:**

> To make sure I'm understood, I am not trying to make Black Doom (a mention too short to add as a character) to be any better of a character than what we actually got. I just used him as the 'resetter' since he technically did have a hand in creating Shadow.


End file.
